cribs

now playing: october project, “a lonely voice”

posts like this are the reason i love the fact that blogging has elevated to the level it has. go on, lane!

it’s raining here – and, according to the weatherman, it will be for the lion’s share of the week. perfect accompaniment to my mood of late.

yesterday was just what the doctor ordered, though…a long sleep-in after a particularly satisfying gig, followed by a road trip to cracker barrell and a temporary overdose on side veggies (their cabbage always sucks. i don’t understand it. everything else they make kicks ass, but their cabbage is always a disappointment. go figure.). home, then, to watch the bruins lose their first playoff game to the home-team canadiens…then, later, i popped in the videotape that blake brought over last week…a documentary on the making of the last fleetwood mac album, “say you will”.

man, was that ever hard to watch.

for those who haven’t seen it, here’s the story in a nutshell: lindsey brings an assload of material to the table, with mick’s initial support for a double album package – but after some, uh, sage managerial advice, mick has a change of heart and ultimately, lindsey is the only member in favor of releasing the double album – against the wishes of the rest of the band. he ultimately sells himself seriously short on royalties, agreeing in principle to get paid for twelve songs even if they include twenty on the album. (and, of course, since the extra songs are all lindseys’, it’s him that would take the financial hit moreso than any of the other band members.) in the end, though, for reasons that aren’t really clear, the album was released as a single album anyway – no one really comes clean on why that is during the course of the show.

and all the while, i’m sitting there thinking that if fleetwood fuckin’-mac is subject to this kinda ass-picking by the labels, what chance does a baby band have in the world we’ve created?

really, why even make the effort?

i think that the silver lining of the huge-assed mess that we’ve made is that once all this dust settles and whatever ultimately happens with the record business as we now know and love it has happened – which is to say that the Time Warners and Sonys and BMGs of the world have been replaced by Amazon.com – we may actually see who’s in this business for the love of music and who’s in it to be on cribs. i think that those who fall into the latter are going to be sorely disappointed with what lay in store for them down the road.

signing a record deal is like hitting the lottery nowadays. you get a hard shot of quick cash, which you blow doing the record company’s job for them and after your first record comes out and ultimately tanks, you’re so far in debt to the record company that you stand no chance of earning a shot at a second record. and if you’re one of the one in 480 acts who actually has some degree of chart success and earns a shot at a second record, your chances of duplicating your initial success are a researched and proven one in 4300. and this is, of course, provided you’ve overcome the almost insurmountable odds against your having arrived in that scenario in the first place.

who needs it?

i think that in ten or fifteen years, even, the artists who are subsisting and earning their keep from their art will be touring almost nonstop and selling discs out of their vans or on the internet. because the court of play keeps creeping in that direction, more and more every day.

me?

i’ll still be fixin’ computers and playin’ in my (an’ i mean this in the best of ways) white-trash, trailer-park, classic rock cover band.

and maybe, sooner or later, i’ll get around to posting some of my works in progress on the internet.

for free.